Tuesday, June 07, 2011

King's Canyon National Park, located an hour east of Fresno, CA, is very similar to Yosemite in that both are glacier-carved valleys in the Sierra Nevada. Both are also very beautiful. But where Yosemite fails (crowding and difficulty getting a campsite or backcountry permit), KCNP totally succeeds. We went on Memorial Day weekend and found an excellent car-camping spot. Justine and I went on a 10-mile hike to Mist Falls, and saw almost nobody the whole way. The whole lot of us took a 5+ mile hike through Zumalt Meadow to Roaring Falls and really only saw people at the waterfalls (which you can drive to). It's a really good find for us, since it's also very easy to get to, despite being further south.

King's Canyon also didn't disappoint in the awesome beauty of the Sierras: Racing rivers and waterfalls, huge granite peaks, and of course giant sequoias. I will definitely be back to KCNP... hopefully before the summer is over.

Afterthought: In reading about giant sequoias on Wikipedia, I made it to the "List of Trees," which is really a list of famous/named/record-breaking trees. I was reading down the list of famous trees in Asia and realize that I've seen several of them.

Which brings be back to King's Canyon: When we were driving to KCNP, we stopped at a drug store for snacks. Justine was wearing a t-shirt from Angkor Wat, and the cashier there asked if we'd been there; she really wanted to see the "Lara Croft tree!"